Rudder.com: Reinventing and Forecasting Personal Finance
Last week I found a new personal finance management tool a la Mint and Yodlee, called Rudder. At first glance, I wasn’t too fond of the name but once I cracked it open, it’s potential usefulness outweighed my disdain for company’s branding.
What I love most about Rudder is it’s ability to track “What’s Left” or your cashflow over the course of two months. I struggle with this as we have different bills coming out of our main account at different times of the month. And, since I hate balancing my checkbook this was a key selling point for me. So while I can use Yodlee and Mint to track balances, manage our spending in different areas such as eating out, groceries and shopping, I primarily use Rudder to tell me where we will be financially at different points in the month. Especially since we now have temporary recurring expenses for the next few months. This is also helpful in planning this year’s vacations and blog conferences as it can get expensive.
Another great thing about Rudder is that it sends an email every morning telling you what bills are due for that day. 90% of my bills are automated so this comes in handy for the few that sometimes slip through the crack because I may forget to log online.
Widgets
Rudder also has widgets you can add or remove depending on what you’re really interested in tracking. These widgets revolve around cashflow forecasting, savings and budgeting. I’m curious to see how the SpendMeter works out because I haven’t done much discretionary spending to see what it’s all about. Though, I think this weekend’s trip to Target may rev things up a bit.
Overall, I think it’s an excellent tool, though I think they could stand to add a few more widgets around tracking budget categories and innovative debt reduction tools which utilize the cashflow forecasting widgets. My wish is for Mint, Yodlee and Rudder to merge and give us one robust tool to track everything. But for now, Rudder is what I use everyday to track cashflow and keep on top of bills that need to be paid manually. Rudder comes in a strong first with Yodlee and Mint coming on second and third respectively.
Check it out and let me know what you think!
Oooh, after reading your review, I just had to try it out. I'm a design girl, tho, and Rudder is definitely not as pretty as Mint. I do love the bill forecast – very handy. But it would've been most helpful if it supported the accounts my fiance and I have, wherein reside most of what cash we have. Poopie. I do agree with you, though, if Mint and Rudder teamed up to provide one service that supports all the financial institutions of Mint but has the super-handy forecast abilities of Rudder, that would be AWESOME.
This is exactly what I've been looking for–it's nice to know what you've already spent, but by now I know what my spending habits are, so Mint and Wesabe and become less useful. This looks interesting. I'll have to give it a try!
As an FYI, on Yodlee MoneyCenter you can create custom recurring bills in the system that will appear on the financial calendar and help you forecast. If you go to cash flow chart, it will let you see your flow into the future based on pending transactions of both income and expense.
..Jordan, Yodlee
Use of this service would give away a wealth of information with every click. None for me, thanks.
This is the first time I hear about this service. But through the comments here, I'll have a try. Thank you
Like you, I wish there was some combination of these services available. I HATE that Mint doesn't allow future transactions, and don't find Yodlee's calendar as useful as it could be because it's not really effective at showing cashflows. Rudder's could be improved by extending the forecasting period a la PocketSmith, but maybe I'm asking too much. I LOVE Microsoft Money's cashflow forecasting. It's the SINGLE thing that keeps me going back to MS Money. I hate a lot of other things in Money, as it's become more and more crippled over the years, but I've yet to find a cashflow forecasting tool that is as useful. As it stands, I end up tracking all of my transactions with Yodlee and then tracking the overall cashflow with MSMoney. It's inelegant, and inefficient, but it seems to be the only choice.
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Hey, I highly recommend http://www.ynab.com (You Need A Budget) over any other budget software because it helps you intuitively assign tasks to all future dollars, making credit cards merely an opportunity to reap the rewards.
[...] Rudder.com: Reinventing and Forecasting Personal Finance [...]
[...] Rudder.com: Reinventing and Forecasting Personal Finance [...]
[...] Rudder.com: Reinventing and Forecasting Personal Finance [...]
This new site looks great. I liked Mint but thought it was limited, Rudder looks like it picked up where Mint fell short. Thanks for the information.